[1] Members of confraternities were usually wealthy citizens, with high profiles in the society, who assisted with religious rites by making financial donations and by reciting Masses.
Often confraternity members began the work on their personal salvation by donating food and other alms to the poor; but in many central Italian cities, like Bergamo, the confraternities became so involved in the community that they provided dowries for young women, ransomed soldiers held captive by enemy governments, and provided restitution to victims of disasters and crime.
[citation needed] Flagellation in these confraternities developed an even stronger tradition in the fourteenth century with the pandemic of the Plague or Black Death.
The massive figure of the merciful Virgin protectively envelops the citizens of Perugia with her outstretched mantle while the image of Death below claims the lives of those outside the city walls.
Seven years later, Bonfigli was commissioned by the flagellant confraternity of San Benedetto dia Frustati to paint a second banner when the city was free of disease.
As Fenley explains, the painting portrays "Christ brandishing arrows and pointing to his own wounds in reminder of the constant threat of the plague, crisis, and the eternal judgment.
[citation needed] With the plague as a reality in their daily life, the populations of these Central Italian cities were no strangers to fear and to the horror of the Black Death.